MALTA — The high-tech company said to be scouting the Capital Region for a manufacturing site might not be a computer chip maker after all — but perhaps Foxconn, the Chinese company that makes Apple's iPhone.

A site selection team working on behalf of an unnamed manufacturing client has looked at business parks in Saratoga and Rensselaer counties — and outside Utica — for a place to build a mammoth 3.2 million-square-foot factory requiring more than 4 million gallons of water a day and 75 megawatts of power.

Computer chip factories also require large amounts of water and electricity — the GlobalFoundries chip factory at Luther Forest Technology Campus in Malta, for example, is nearly 2 million square feet and its initial demands have been for about 3 million gallons of water a day and 40 megawatts of power.

But the factory being proposed now to local economic development officials, all of whom have signed non-disclosure agreements that prevent them from talking about it, is larger and would require much more water and electricity.

A "mega" chip fab designed to accommodate the next generation of manufacturing equipment needed to process 18-inch silicon wafers into chips instead of today's standard 12-inch wafers would have to be larger than the GlobalFoundries factory, known as Fab 8.

But making liquid crystal displays, or LCDs, for high-definition TV sets and computer monitors often has higher demands for space and resources than even a large computer chip factory.

Foxconn, one of the world's largest makers of LCD panels, is looking to build LCD production factories in the United States, according to several media reports.

The decision, industry analysts say, may be tied to the enormous strain that making iPhones has put on Foxconn's factories in Asia.

The LCD panel market is huge. According to research and consulting firm NPD DisplaySearch, the industry is poised to increase revenues this year to $85 billion, a 12 percent jump over last year.

In order to feed that demand, LCD makers have been building larger factories. Even older facilities are large. Sharp, Japan's biggest LCD maker, built a 4.8 million-square-foot LCD factory in 2004. That facility, in Kameyama, uses 48,000 tons of water a day, or 11 million gallons, nearly three times Fab 8's current requirements.

Sharp spent $10 billion on another LCD factory a few years later. As a comparison, GlobalFoundries will near $7 billion in spending on Fab 8 — but only after an expansion beyond its current footprint.

Foxconn has also been discussing taking an equity stake in Sharp, a deal that analysts have said would shore up Foxconn's ability to make LCD panels for Apple's products.

Foxconn did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether it is looking at the Capital Region. Officials from Deloitte, the global consulting firm, have toured Luther Forest Technology Campus and Rensselaer Technology Park in North Greenbush. The Marcy Nanocenter in Oneida County was also visited.

Media reports have said that Foxconn is also looking at sites in Michigan and California.